#illyriapara

[illyriathemerciless]

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

There were many things in this world that Illyria did not like, excluding her own place and power within it. She did not like food. The smell of it was pleasing, at times, though she found that many of the foods that seemed to bring pleasure to those that she watched over at the Angel Investigations office were pungent, and had a tendency to mingle together over the days and weeks in ways that created an unpleasant cacophony of scents that lingered in the carpet fibers and grains of the walls. She did not walls to begin with, and when those enclosing barriers were tainted with the overpowering odors of humankind and their eccentricities, it only made her all the aware of just how trapped she was. This was one, of many, reasons that she avoided the places that they called hospitals, the buildings where the humans tended to their injured, their sick, and their dying. The smell of the human grief and sorrow and loss and pain was nearly nauseating; and for a creature without a stomach that was quite a feat. The smell of the chemicals, the poisons and herbs, the cleansing materials that they used to strip the disease from the walls and the floors and the very air was metallic and sour, and even still did not hide the smell of human ichor beneath it all.

Humans. How such small and incredibly fragile things could create such a range of fluids and smells, she would not ever understand. The taste of their emotions aside, they seemed capable of leaking from every orifice, and then some, and the physical representation of their emotions in their sweat was even worse than the grate of their emotions against her senses. Their blood was pungent, metallic and bittersweet to her nostrils, and seemed to stain everything that it came into contact with, with a stubbornness and tenacity that outlived its previous host more often than not. With all of these reasons, and dislikes in mind, it had taken a long moment for her to decide what to do with the human, bleeding and broken, that she had found at the end of the alleyway after defeating the odd company of the demons and vampires that had been … from the looks of it, attempting to dismember and shred the human girl into pieces. There seemed only a slim chance that the girl would survive, but Illyria had concluded finally that if she left the girl to bleed out it would most likely cause some degree of conflict the whisper of a voice, familiar and not her own, that lingered in the back of her thoughts even still.

Having scooped the girl up, it had taken her only a few minutes to cross over rooftops and through alley ways to the hospital. It had taken barely an effort to force the door marked ‘employee entrance’ open, a chirp of complaint quickly silenced by removal of the blinking number pad beside the handle. Moving quickly, and without being observed, she slipped into one of the curtained rooms within the chaos that was the room where the physicians rushed from one patient to the next and deposited the human onto one of the wheeled beds. Sliding back into a recess, she waited just long enough to ensure that the girl’s presence would be discovered before cutting back across to one of the abandoned hallways of the hospital, and into the empty, or close to it, portion of the hospital. She could smell the blood and ichor, the sweat and pain of the girl on herself, and decided just as abruptly that she must find some place to scrub or rinse the sweat and blood from her form. Due to her ability to craft her own shape, she did not have to worry about tears or damage to her armor, but she could not simply ‘erase’ any external components upon it, either.

Purposeful strides carried her through the hallways of the employees wing at a quick, if not quite superhuman pace, ignoring all of the rooms she strode through until the one that would suit was found. The door clanged closed behind her, her electric blue eyes studying the lockers that lined the room, small metal boxes, with turning locks that would barely resist a human’s strength much less her own, but her focus quickly turned to the room beyond, and the rows of sinks, and faucets against one wall, and three curtained off showers to the side. Her head tilted, suddenly, her upper body half turning towards the door behind her as the sound of movement at it caught her attention, her blue eyes focused on the sound, and smells beyond, and on the creature at the door when it finally opened.

[illyriathemerciless]

Bruises || Solo

Compromise.  There were many words that she had come to learn to despise since her return to this world but among them, the one that she reviled the most was that one: compromise. Her existence had subsisted of nothing but since her return. She had been forced to compromise with the shape that she had been shunted into, small and frail and brittle, sticks and mud. She had been forced to compromise with her goals of this world, for this world that she should have ruled, trodden underfoot without a thought to instead exist in a life that seemed to her, at times, less than that of a human in this despicable place. She had been forced to compromise when they had stripped her power from her, forced to choose between death, and this existence, she would have chosen death but they had taken that choice from her. He had taken that choice from her, hating her and despising her and yet unwilling to let her go for that last fragment of hope that she could ever return what had been taken from him, or out of some desire to cling to the last remnants of the woman whom she had possessed.

Constraint. She had been forced to bend to the rules and moral code that he had placed upon her so that he might be willing to help her, to show her how to survive, how to exist in this world that was nothing like what it should have been. She had been restricted, confined, quartered and trapped within this shell, within rooms and walls, within rules and mandates of things that should have held no importance to her since the moment of her return, and she had found that at very long and overdue last, she had reached the end of her immense restraint. She had been forced into little pieces, little moments, fragments of time and pieces of an existence, bound by words and loyalties and wounds of a heart that she did not possess, and she could contain herself no longer. Not now.  Not when she had come to know this truth.  He had returned.  He had left her.  He had made her feel.  She knew, now more than ever that their fates were locked. Sealed. They had destroyed one another and yet still they stood. Impotent. She could not save him. She could not help him, and he had not wanted her to – not then. He had only wanted the one thing that he could not have in this world. She could not give him Fred. She could not give him peace. She could not save him. She could not save herself. She could only do one thing.

Violence. It was not as if it was difficult to find. This town was built upon its premise, the end of this age of man having lent itself to a proclivity of bloodshed and violence, enough so to nearly sate the unquenchable thirst of the once God-King.  Nearly.  The vampires had made no pretense of concealing their hunting grounds.  She had smelled the sickly sweet odor of rotted, fetid flesh and bloodstained earth from many blocks away.  From there, finding the nest had been simple.  They were protected only by walls of plaster and wood and panes of glass – doors that shattered with barely a glancing blow as she pressed her way within. She moved with alacrity, and struck in a flurry of blows, the first two of the demonic guards that made an immediate appearance dropped within seconds; one solid slam of her flat hand against the chest of one left their ribs concave, even the extra organs of the demon species doing little to protect them from the multiple instant penetrations and shards of bone that pierced through their body with a satisfying crunch. The human beside him was broken in barely a moment’s effort, his head twisted sideways and staring up at the ceiling with blank eyes as it hit the ground. The screams of those that would have been the human victims within the club were ignored; a series of sweeping strides carrying her forward to the first of the vampires that backpedaled, those nearest, their bones snapping with ease under the flurry of blows, blood and ash splashing against the glossy wood floor beneath her, pooling outwards in hypnotizing swirls. It was luxurious, the feel of it, the taste of their fear and their pain and their panic. She could hear them coming, their would be soldiers, the metallic clicking of their weapons being prepared.

Exhilaration.  She could feel it, burning hot and bright in her, the need for thought and emotions fading away into the thrill of it. Primal. Instinctive. Her gaze snapped towards the hallways that led into the foyer, a malicious and almost gleeful smile touching her lips as she watched the scattered and rag-tag handful of vampires approach.”Come, then, and I will grant you the honor of a death greater than you deserve.” She taunted, she challenged, dropping the wheezing form of the last one that had crossed her path, her hands falling to her side, watching, waiting for them to come to her, to give her the battle that she craved.